It only took us four years!

For two fairly intelligent people you would think that WE would have thought about this years ago.

We got Skype!

This is a classic case of desperation. With Reef in South Africa and my teaching this semester this will be the longest period away from each other in four years.

I can see her!

I can see myself!

She CAN'T see me!

Some stupid little thing is wrong and when I discover it I will probably laugh my head off. In the meantime, this is frustrating!

It is wonderful to see her.

She showed me one of the cats who was ill when I was last there. All white, fluffy and fat!

Reef says,"just like me."

Seems like we are both eating our way into oblivion!

Long distance relationships are more than difficult. They are life altering, more so than living even 50 miles apart.

The POND is the POND!

And that is pretty much the problem.

While we are still apart we will avail ourselves of modern technology.

Something, for which, on this snowing Sunday morning, I am most grateful.

Choice

It’s Africa hot. I know Africa. I have slept during the night in 30-degree weather and begged for air and shade by the next noon. Wearing layers of clothing, as instructed, I peeled each layer off in frenzied delirium as I marked the passing of every morning hour.

Ah! Sweltering here on Long Island in the middle of October? The sun has come and gone throughout the day. It is dreary and virtually menacing. There is no breeze so the ginger tinged leaves hesitate, waiting for permission to descend to the steamy ground. The majestic oaks still secreted under the sprigs are anxious to flaunt their bark, their armor, ready for the winter confrontation. Everything awaits the natural progression of life.

I need the sun. When the winter comes, anything is bearable as long as there is sun.

The east coast seldom disappoints me. Most days are favored with bright light. During the coldest record breaking snowstorms the sun has brilliantly shown, indifferent to the other forces of nature and the expectations of mortals. Such sovereignty!

It is different where she lives. In Scotland, the rain comes on most days of the year, blessing the earth, keeping it fertile and green for the sheep and cows that graze across the road from our home.

The days are short. When I fly in it is dark with the sunrise coming two hours after landing. As we drive over hilltops on the west, it is a roller coaster ride along the sea, first steeply up and falling quickly into the cavernous valleys. The surf crashes briskly against the rocks and then again slides down into the oblivion of the Firth of Clyde.

In winter, dark cloaks the town by 5 pm. One is suddenly embraced by this nightfall prompting thoughts of mortality and extinction. It is a primitive place with a church whose dead have rested there for hundreds of years. Evenings are spent with a gas stove rendering one grateful as the hardships of past inhabitants are considered.

Two worlds, one bright, the other either coming out of the darkness or into it.

Copyright © 2008 by m.m.sugar

"The difficulty in life is the choice."
George A. Moore



"Between two stools one sits on the ground."
Francois Rabelais


“I’ll have that one, please”
H.B. Tree

When love comes late Part II

Love came to me late in life or perhaps I finally came to love.

We both wish we had known each other in the bud of youth. She has a picture of me in my early twenties with long flowing hair. She has confessed that that is with whom she makes love to on occasion. I have a picture of her with a wide-open face revealing the totality of her character through pervasive blue eyes.

Yet, we know each other in the glow of maturity, motherhood, warmth, compassion and passion of pure glee mixed in with the frantic grasp of those drowning at the side of the Titanic, so we know love. It is richness like that of the gems that come from her native South Africa and broadness like that of the ocean standing like a forbidding parent between us.

We have been on different wavelengths since we first spoke. Different: cultures, humor, spiritual belief systems, I could fill up the page.

It has been a difficult time. Yet, from the beginning, I had a sense of her. At first, there was observation, which slowly brought me into an unconscious meeting of her half way. I assert unconscious because I thought that I was still on the observation deck.

She is quite the charmer. Those of you who read her, well need I say more?

Though she calls me the impossible American, I tend to give people space. However, she is as demanding as she is a smoker, unrelenting, constant, resolute; gives no space “just do as I say sweetheart”.

I am called impossible because I say, “yeah right?”

Somehow, in the last year the observation deck became a vague memory and I quickly, but I must admit wholeheartedly, slipped into conscious awareness that I was in love.

Scary, I had been so well protected. Armed, I had worn the psychological chastity belt of the Crusades my entire adult life. Intimacy was not my forte. Playing with impossible relationships always followed by the predictable lamentations was my custom.

We are finally on the same page. Upon rising, I check in, her day is well into the afternoon. We speak many times during the day: Common things, life things, just to exchange, nothing of great import.

Yet, it is a connection. We speak of holding each other on a rainy night. The simplicity is undeniable and incomprehensible.

She will be on my side of the Atlantic in two weeks. There will be twenty-nine days of tenderness, hilarity, ardor, arguments, and then the trip back to the airport.

One wonders what side of the pond each one of us will die upon!

Copyright © 2008 by m.m.sugar